This week - fencing in Birmingham and Being A Man at the Southbank Centre

This week Muslim Girls Fence travels to Birmingham and we challenge stereotypes of Muslim men in prison at the Being a Man (BAM) festival at the Southbank Centre.

Muslim girls will be picking up swords this week in Birmingham as Maslaha’s Muslim Girls Fence project heads to the Midlands.‘Muslim Girls Fence’, a Maslaha project in collaboration with British Fencing, uses fencing to tackle prevalent misperception of young Muslim women, in light of the complex discrimination Muslim girls and women face on the basis of both faith and gender. The project made waves when it was delivered to schools in East London and we’re excited to see it continue to shatter stereotypes in schools and colleges across Birmingham.

Muslim girls from schools in Birmingham will take part in an engagement day at the Firs and Bromford Wellbeing Centre on Wednesday November 23rd 9:30 am – 2:30 pm. The project will be delivered in six schools in Birmingham between November 2016 and February 2017.

We’re also taking part at the Being A Man Festival at the Southbank Centre where we will unveil the final image from our work recreating a piece of iconic art to challenge negative stereotypes of Muslim men in prison. Muslim men in prison are overwhelmingly seen as extreme and terrorists, despite only 1% of the Muslim prison population being charged with terrorism-related offences. We worked with photographer Wasi Daniju and some young Muslim men from Leicester who had been in prison to recreate an expressionist etching from the New Walk Gallery in Leicester. The final image will be on display across the three days of the festival.